Nuclear power plant near Tri-Cities back on the grid just ahead of blistering heatwave

The Northwest’s only nuclear power plant reconnected to the electric grid early Saturday morning, just ahead of a forecast spike in temperatures that is expected to increase demand for power in the region.

The Columbia Generating Station near Richland disconnected from the grid six weeks ago for refueling and maintenance work that is scheduled every other spring when hydropower is plentiful and mild weather typically reduces the demand for electricity.

Temperatures across the state are rising, including in the Tri-Cities region. Its forecast is for sunshine and highs in the 90s throughout the week and possibly 100 on Monday.

It is the third-largest electricity generator in the state of Washington.

Energy Northwest’s nuclear power plant began to power up on Wednesday, day 39 of the planned 40 day outage.

During the outage 260 of the 764 fuel assemblies in the reactor’s core were replaced with new fuel.

A temporary work force of 1,400 people, in addition to about 1,000 permanent employees, completed preventive maintenance on equipment and made major upgrades to equipment while the reactor was shut down.

“The team completed a tremendous amount of work over the past several weeks,” said Grover Hettel, Energy Northwest chief nuclear officer. He called the outage a “rigorous, non-stop 24/7 activity.”

Crews installed a 34-foot, 133-ton refurbished low-pressure turbine rotor; replaced the reactor water cleanup heat exchangers; refurbished a condensate pump and motor; inspected and cleaned the circulating water basin and piping; and replaced a reactor recirculating pump and motor.

Equipment replacement, refurbishments and upgrades since 2010 have increased the plant’s gross generation capacity from 1,150 megawatts to 1,207 megawatts.

This story was originally published June 19, 2021 at 11:50 AM.